The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The Paradoxes of Philosophy

Philosophy is the art of thinking, but thinking is not an art, it's at least not meant to be. Art is not thinking and thinking is not art. Then what is philosophy ultimately? We don't know. Thinking for thinking's sake? Hopefully not, but we can't be sure.

True knowledge in the Kantian sense of knowing things as they are is unattainable, yet we do our best to attain it. If we know it can't be had, why do we bother trying? We can't help it, I guess.

I claim that good-enough knowledge is achievable, but neither I nor anyone else can precisely define "good-enough". I can only provide a good-enough definition of what is "good enough", which seems invalid or at best valid-enough, i.e. as good as it gets. That's embarassing, isn't it?

Understanding the world and our place in it requires a rational approach, or so we think... intuitively. Now, intuition is not rational. Our best definition of rationality is intuitive, and we don't even have a definition of intuition. If all our thinking is really grounded in intuition, how can we tell the difference between what's rational and what's intuitive? We actually call part of our intuition as such and refer to another part of it as rationality. Why call part of our intuition rationality? For no particular reason, I'm afraid.

Is philosophy the broadest possible framework in which to understand the world? Probably. How do we know? Well, we don't know. Yet I intuit that philosophy is the broadest possible framework in which to make sense of the world.

Philosophy can also make some sense of intuition and emotions. I can think about feeling and I can feel thinking, but how do I know I'm not mistaken when I mix these two distinct realms? Does thinking about feeling lead to a truer understanding of emotions than feeling the emotions themselves? Some might say yes, some might say no. Is hearing sights more accurate than seeing sounds? Or is seeing sights and hearing sounds more revealing?

If I don't have hard and fast answers to the questions above, what good is my philosophy? You'll find out in the following chapters. Philosophy is more about asking the right questions than about providing the right answers. If so, are there any sensible statements in philosophy? If not, isn't that a problem from a practical point of view?

Maybe, that's why most people who are successful in real life don't philosophise and most philosophers don't succeed in real life. Is it possible to combine philosophy with real-life success though? I intuit that it is.